Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

I've seen all film incarnations of Jack Finney's book The Body Snatchers, and this is my favorite version and one of my favorite films. The body-snatching concept is as thematically fill-in-the-blank as are zombie films. It's been used to comment on xenophobia, communism, conformity, social upheaval, and political ideology. For me, it's the core concept - being betrayed by the person or people closest to you - that strikes a nerve, and Finney is brilliant for inventing a foundation from which writers and directors can develop their own spin.

Philip Kaufman is not a prolific director, and like Terrance Malick, he tends to make diverse films that explore differing genres and tones. (Kaufman is rumored to be developing the script for Indiana Jones 5, so god help us we may recover from Jones 4 after all) His approach to this Invasion was to build on the 1956 original narrative and characters, add a bit to the alien back story, and use 70s effects to show more of the snatching process on screen. He also brought a masterstroke to the Snatchers mythology: the piercing scream that the aliens emit when they identify a human in their midsts. (Used to excellent effect here, but bested by Meg Tilly's scream in Abel Ferrara's 1993 remake-of-a-remake Body Snatchers)

Another Kaufman trick is to use background or incidental imagery to unsettled the audience. Each time I watch the film I pick up on a visual clue in the background that totally creeps me out. Often it's just a handful of extras standing with blank stares; in one instance there is a man looking through a clouded glass window, staring at the main characters and tracking their movements. They only last a second or two, but it definitely creates a sense of overwhelming conspiracy. I was reminded of the way that Polanski uses sound to unsettle the audience in Chinatown, and, more recently, the way that Scorsese plays with the language of film editing and continuity in Shutter Island. I am always impressed when a director goes to lengths to add another layer to the experience.

If you haven't seen the film, it's a no-brainer to rent it immediately. Hell, I would recommend all versions of this basic story, even the Nicole Kidman movie The Invasion, just to see how each writer/director interprets the material.

Cropsey

For me, tales of true crime scratch the same emotional itch as horror films. I like getting to the brink of the seedy, taboo, and horrific from the safety of my couch. Cropsey is a fine example of both, and an excellent sleeper documentary that everyone should seek out.

Cropsey is directed by the duo of Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zemen, and is based on an urban legend from, of all places, Staten Island. Since the late 70s, children have been telling tales of Cropsey: an ex-mental patient from the now-closed Willowbrook State School, a home for children with mental retardation. Cropsey was your run-of-the-mill boogeyman who lived in the abandon tunnels of Willowbrook and crept out at night to snatch children who were never seen or heard from again.

The urban legend became real in 1987 when Jennifer Schweiger, a 13-year-old with Down's Syndrom, went missing. Over the next several years, a series of missing-children cases plagued the island, and it wasn't too long before the residents found their boogeyman: a man by the name of Andre Rand, an ex-orderly from the Willowbrook State School.

One of the first documentaries that I ever saw and really enjoyed was Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills. (My love of that film prompted me to check out an earlier film of theirs, Brother's Keeper, which is equally excellent). There are similar themes present here: namely, a society's tendency to catch, package, and brand someone who looks or acts "different" as a much more monstrous being than they really may be. But Brancaccio and Zemen don't stop there; there are twists that make you rethink everything you've just seen, and the film had me guessing for the entire 84 minute runtime (short, but a perfect length for this material).

I haven't said much about the horror elements, and I will leave them to be experienced for yourself. All I will say is that I have a new found respect for Geraldo Rivera, who makes a cameo in some of the most disturbing footage I have seen, and the grainy, 70s-era film stock makes it all that much creepier.

Ps: I've been a New Yorker now for 15 years, and I have no idea how I didn't hear about this case and the trial of Andre Rand. Sadly I think this kind of stuff happens more often than we think.

Sarah Silverman's The Bedwetter

A video game came out recently called "Green Day: Rock Band." I haven't played it, but it strikes me as a game made specifically for fans of, um, Green Day. That's how I feel about recommending The Bedwetter.

Many people know that I will happily debate you on such important topics as The Best TV Finale Of All Time (The Shield, duh) and The Best M. Night Film Of All Time (Signs, duh). But I would never debate someone on the humor of Sarah Silverman... you either get it like it or you don't.

I'm a fan, so I enjoyed the The Bedwetter. I often find myself bored by biographies and biopics; it takes a special life to be more interesting than the best fiction out there. But I like the lightness of the autobiographical chapters here, nicely interspersed with personal anecdotes about her public persona and her TV show (recently cancelled, boo).

One highlight is how she describes a coworker's penchant for exposing himself in the writer's room. Apparently professional comics are so jaded that they resort to the most crude and shocking things to get a laugh out of their peers. One day this person found a hairclip in the break room, clipped it to his penis, took a picture, and posted it in the break room with the note: "Did anyone lose a hairclip?"

If you don't find this funny, steer clear of The Bedwetter.

Red Dead Redemption

I've invested many hours in to Rock Star's Grand Theft Auto games, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't bring myself to be a fan. The concept is very seductive: a living, breathing open world ready for exploration, and a million ways to approach things and make it feel customized to your play style. On paper, I'm on board.

In reality, they are just too bogged down in traversal issues and minor design flaws that roll up in to a pretty frustrating experience over time. All the popular trappings: no in-mission save system, TONS of time spent getting from point A to point B, cut scenes that are inconsistent with the player's previous in-game choices, etc. I finally wised-up after plopping down 40 bucks for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS and turning it off, forever, after about 3 hours of play time. I got hit by a lot of bricks, but now I don't even consider stepping back in to that world.

Now, after putting in about 30 hours in Rock Star's Red Dead Redemption, I think I've come to realize that it's not so much the genre as the world it creates. Red Dead is definitely a second cousin to Grand Theft Auto, no doubt. But a turn-of-the-century western setting feels much more appropriate for an open-world game than a modern-day urban environment. The vast open spaces with pockets of civilization are more in-line with what the technology is capable of delivering.

For as much as I loved Oblivion (until I realized the monsters level up along with you) and Fallout 3, I couldn't get over the lack of life. I get that Fallout 3 takes place post-apocalypse, but, come on, who built Megaton? Certainly not the 6 derelicts that live there. How does the doctor make a living treating the same handful of people?

I won't do an IGN-style review of Red Dead, but I will say it is certainly worth spending some time with, especially if you're interested in Rock Star's other properties. It still suffers from some of the annoying design flaws that plague the GTA games (really? a 10 second animation every time I find loot?), but the diegesis provides a much better foundation for a game and encourages me to overlook this kind of stuff.

More on Red Dead when I finish it.

Is this thing on?

Much of my life is spent in front of glowing rectangles -- my TV, the movie screen, my Droid, my Kindle (ok, no backlight there yet), my PC. Why not add to the billions of folks sharing their opinions on all things consumable? Let's do this.